Tia Maria

Political Geography 71 (2019) 10–25
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Political Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
‘Agro sí, mina NO!’ the Tía Maria copper mine, state terrorism and social T
war by every means in the Tambo Valley, Peru
Alexander Dunlap
Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, Norway
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
Keywords: The Tía Maria copper mine situated above the agricultural Tambo Valley, southwest Peru, has sparked nearly ten
Peru years of protracted conflict. This conflict began in 2009, yet Southern Copper Peru or Southern, a subsidiary of
Environmental conflict Grupo Mexico, has faced ardent resistance. This article explores the ‘political reactions from above’, examining
Counterinsurgency how Southern and the Peruvian government have negotiated the popular rejection of the mine. Residents have
Resistance
organized a popular consultation, large-scale demonstrations, road blockades and general strikes, which has
Mining
Corporate social responsibility
been met with violent repression. Reviewing the political ecology of counterinsurgency, which studies the socio-
ecological warfare techniques employed to control human and natural resources, and relating it to social war
discourse, this section lays the theoretical foundations to discuss the coercion and ‘social war component’ present
in natural resource extraction. This leads to an overview of the relationship between Peruvian security forces and
extraction industries, followed by a brief chronology of the Tía Maria conflict. The subsequent two sections offer
a political ecology analysis of various ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ counterinsurgency techniques employed by the Peruvian
state and Southern in an attempt to pacify social unrest and socially engineer acceptance of the project. The
concluding section discusses the ‘whole-of-government’ counterinsurgency approach employed, recognizing how
the present institutional arrangements and business imperatives are designed to override popular socio-ecolo-
gical concerns. Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state apparatus and politics itself
serve as an instrument of social pacification and ecological exploitation regardless of widespread ecological and
climatic concerns.
Pacification—the military, political, economic and social process of civil society groups, the latter declared an indefinite strike on March 23,
establishing or re-establishing local government responsive to and invol- 2015. This is the second time hundreds of people began protesting to
ving the participation of the people. It includes the provision of sustained, prevent the mine from entering the Tambo Valley in the Islay province,
credible territorial security, the destruction of the enemy's underground southwest Peru (Fig. 1). Demonstrations and road blockades would
government, the assertion or re-assertion of political control and in- spread across the Valley. San Francisco Plaza, in the city of Cocachacra,
volvement of the people in government, and the initiation of economic was a central rallying point, complete with road blockades made of
and social activity capable of self-sustenance and expansion. The eco- stones and sticks with people waving their neon green flags above their
nomic element of pacification includes the opening of roads and water- heads that read: ‘Agro sí, mina NO!’—Agriculture yes, mine NO! At two
ways and the maintenance of lines of communication important to eco- o'clock on March 28th, 2015, the police began firing teargas canisters
nomic and military activity. into the crowd to disperse the protest and break the barricade—‘with
Colonel Erwin Brigham, June 1968 the tear gas people could not breathe and you had to run,’ explains
‘Kali’ who continues:
1. Introduction Everybody was running and jumped the irrigation ditch and I
couldn't make it. When I wanted to jump, I fell into the water and I
On August 1st, 2014, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines felt another person fall on top of me and it was a cop. The water
(MEM) approved the second environmental impact assessment (EIA), carried us downstream thirty meters and the cop let go of me, be-
which allowed the Tía Maria Copper Mine to commence mineral ex- cause the two of us were struggling and the water was taking us
ploitation. When dialogue failed between the Peruvian Government and away. The water current was strong and the irrigation ditch was
E-mail address: alexander.a.dunlap@gmail.com.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.02.001
Received 13 September 2018; Received in revised form 29 January 2019; Accepted 1 February 2019
Available online 16 February 2019
0962-6298/ © 2019 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
A. Dunlap Political Geography 71 (2019) 10–25
Fig. 1. Peru, The Tambo Valley and the Tía Maria project. Source: La Republica.
2.5 m wide and the water was about this deep—here [over chest already began assessing the mineral reserve situated above the agri-
high]. We cannot stand either, so he let me go and he caught a cultural Tambo Valley in 2000. It negotiated with government officials
branch …. The water carried me further, like eighty meters, until an and civil servants in 2005 and later provided three consultations (au-
irrigation pond and a cement bridge. There, a lot of police were dencias) to the Tambo Valley. The third consultation in August 2009,
waiting, and I did not have any other options—I had to pass them. however, is when open conflict broke out. People began rioting,
Right before I passed under the bridge about six or seven police throwing rocks and plastic chairs at Southern Copper Peru re-
jumped in the water and it wasn't to get me out of the water—that presentatives (hereafter Southern) after the company announced its
would have been nice. Instead, they began to beat me—hard, hard, preference to use the ground and river water, not sea water with a
hard! They were trying to drown me and when I was in a very bad desalination plant at the mine (Jaskoski, 2014; Romero, 2017). What
condition they brought me to edge of the canal. Then one of the began here, would develop into a protracted conflict that, since 2011,
police says: “That guy almost died.” In that moment, think of my has resulted in eight deaths— seven protesters and one police officer—
pants, where am I going to have some rocks and a Honda [long-rang hundreds of injuries and President Ollanta Humala declaring a sixty day
sling shot]? We were in that place for about five minutes and they State of Emergency on May 9, 2015.
lifted me up and dragged me in the direction of the police station. Building upon the political ecology and critical agrarian studies
And in that moment appears the cop who was in the water with me literature (Ulloa, 2013/2005, 2017; Fairhead, Leach, & Scoones, 2012;
and the other police say, “Commander! We caught one!” Borras et al., 2012; Sullivan, 2013; Aguilar-Støen, 2016; Cavanagh &
[Commander:] “This motherfucker (conchasumadre) escaped from Benjaminsen, 2017), this article seeks to explore ‘political reactions
me.” And then they took me to the police station and the from above’ (Geenen & Verweijen, 2017: 2) through the lens of coun-
Commander Raúl Genaro Acosta arrived fifteen minutes later and, terinsurgency. It will examine the strategies, tactics and approaches
with insults, told me: “Motherfucker hands on the wall” and I feel employed by and between Southern Copper and the Peruvian state to
him putting his hands in my left pocket. So I look down and I see he mitigate and repress the popular rejection of the Tía Maria project. In
is putting rocks and a Honda in my pocket. So I knock his hand away doing so, the article contributes to the study of ‘militarized mining’
and I say: “What are you doing Commander? Why are you putting (Gedicks, 2015: 146), the criminalization of land defense (Middeldorp,
that on me when I never had that?” And he says to another officer, Morales, & der Harr 2016; Birss, 2017; Rasch, 2017; Dunlap, 2018/
“put this on him, write this in the police report and I am going to 2017; Brock & Dunlap, 2018; Middeldorp & Le Billon, 2019) and
sign!” And that is what he did—Raúl Genaro Acosta. I spent fourteen militarization beyond the battlefield more generally. Heeding the call
months in prison and left that place on November 4, 2016.1 by Marta Conde and Philippe Le Billon (2017: 693) for greater research
into ‘the criminalization of dissent by the state and the repression of
This police practice of planting weapons on protestors once in
resistance by mining companies’, this article approaches environmental
custody was common during the Tía Maria conflict. This conflict began
conflicts through counterinsurgency to critically dissect the relation-
in 2009, yet Southern Copper Peru, a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico,
ships of force and social engineering efforts employed past and present
(in various intensities) to open and maintain natural resource extraction
1
Interview 2, 12-01-2018. Note: This lengthy prison sentence was also re- sites. Highlighting the social war component within the Tía Maria
lated to violating probation by not appearing at the police station every project, the article argues that the Peruvian government and Southern
Monday. Copper are employing a ‘whole-of-government’ counterinsurgency
11
approach articulated through formal and informal private-public part- 2. The political ecology of counterinsurgency
nerships2 to socially engineer subsoil extraction.
The article is based on field research in the Tambo Valley conducted Military hardware, techniques and strategies remain foundational to
between December 28, 2017 and February 22, 2018, which employed land control and natural resource extraction. Coercive technologies are
participant observation, semi-structured and informal interviews. instrumental to what Tania Murray Li (2014: 592) calls, ‘rendering land
Interviews were conducted in various towns in the Tambo Valley: investible,’ that are creating the conditions for investment and land-
Cocachacra, El Fiscal, Pampilla, Punta de Bombón, Nuevo Arenal, La scapes development. Rendering land investable, Le Billon and
Curva and Mejía (Fig. 1). Interviews were approached through a pre- Sommerville (2017: 214) explain, requires three factors: creating a
established network of (trusted) intermediaries from the region, which narrative exclaiming both the financial and social benefits of the de-
facilitated making initial contacts through their familial and commer- velopment project; constructing and enforcing a legal framework sui-
cial networks in the Tambo Valley. This was followed by opportunistic table to transnational, national and elite interests (often at the expense
sampling in public spaces (streets, taxis, markets, shops and restau- of rural communities); and mobilizing labor, infrastructure and the
rants) which, after explaining the research project and anonymization resources necessary to accomplish natural resource extraction. Gov-
of names in the final text,3 participants would identify preference for ernmental and corporate efforts to control land and render it investible
informal or semi-structured interviews. This included numerous inter- have led to increasing research examining the militarization of nature.
views with company representatives, eager to explain their version of Foregrounded by scholarly work on imperial/colonial relations
event, and municipal agents who I approached or was introduced to by (Galeano, 1997/1973; Rodney, 2009/1972), the geopolitics of resource
intermediaries. In total sixty informal and forty-seven recorded semi- wars (Le Billon, 2001, 2012), framings of national and environmental
structured interviews were conducted together with a friend and in- security discourses (Huff, 2017; Peluso & Watts, 2001), environmental
terpreter, Carlo Eduardo Fernández Valencia, who has long-term roots conflicts (Gedicks, 2015; Martínez-Alier, 2002), social movement
in the Tambo Valley. There was over 1308 min4 of recorded audio from theory (Bebbington et al., 2008: 2888–2905; Middeldorp et al., 2016;
semi-structured interviews. The majority of research participants were Verweijen, 2017: 1–17) and policing (Williams, 2007/2004; Dunlap,
women, while also including a wide range of occupations: farmers, 2014b) has slowly laid the foundation for counterinsurgency to emerge
fishermen, merchants, grocers, civil servants, company representatives, as a focus in environmental conflicts.
current and/or ex-leaders of civil society groups, conservationists, a The emergence of counterinsurgency also overlaps with recent re-
lawyer and a private security contractor. While the location of inter- search into ‘green militarization’ (Lunstrum, 2014; Massé & Lunstrum,
views is recorded, it is no indication for where research participants 2016), ‘green violence’ (Büscher & Ramutsindela, 2016), ‘Green Wars’
live, as for instance a Taxi driver informally interviewed in Punta would (Büscher & Fletcher, 2018) and the ‘greening of the military’ (Bigger &
live in Mollendo. Questions focused on what research participants Neimark, 2017; Dunlap, 2017a). Political ecology research into coun-
thought about the Tía Maria mine, their experience with the conflict terinsurgency revealed that it is not only foundational to nation state
and Southern's actions in the Valley to impose the mine. Research formation, but also the creation of ‘national forests,’ present day cities
participants were disproportionally against the mine: semi-structured and the production of space more generally (Peluso & Vandergeest,
interviews articulated 35 ‘anti-mine’, and 11 ‘pro-mine’ views (and one 2011). Counterinsurgency and economic growth retain a profound af-
exempt), while informal interviews had 41 anti-mine and 19 pro-mine. finity in regards to ways that military-security efforts create the con-
The interviews were complemented with secondary research—books, ditions for capital accumulation, whether relating to conservation parks
articles, newspapers, blogs and public relations material. Information (Verweijen & Marijnen, 2018; Ybarra, 2012); development schemes
was triangulated by drawing on secondary research material, verifica- (Copeland, 2012; Devine, 2014; Grajales, 2013; Marijnen, 2017; Paley,
tion discussions with intermediaries, repeated interview themes and 2014; Price, 2014); the green economy or ‘climate change commodities’
follow up questions with various actors. Because of the level of conflict (Dunlap & Fairhead, 2014: 938; Dunlap, 2018/2017). Furthermore,
in this region, preserving research participant confidentiality is a counterinsurgency and natural resource extraction, as will be elabo-
priority in this contribution. rated below, retain a relationship that is both an illustrious marriage
The rest of this article is structured as follows. The next section and secretive affair.
reviews the political ecology of counterinsurgency, discussing its re- Counterinsurgency is defined by Kilcullen (2006: 29, 31) as ‘a
lationship to social war discourse and violence within extractive re- competition with the insurgent for the right and ability to win the
search. This leads to reviewing the relationship between Peruvian se- hearts, minds and acquiescence of the population,’ where ‘hearts’ are
curity forces and extraction industries, which is followed by a brief explained as ‘persuading people their best interests are served by your
chronology of the Tía Maria conflict. The subsequent two sections delve success’ and ‘minds,’ ‘convincing them that you can protect them, and
into analyzing the various ‘hard’ (direct) and ‘soft’ (indirect) counter- that resisting you is pointless’. Counterinsurgency is a type of
insurgency techniques employed by Peruvian state and Southern in an war—‘low-intensity’ or ‘asymmetrical’ combat—and style of warfare
attempt to pacify social unrest and socially engineering acceptance of that emphasizes intelligence networks, psychological operations, media
the Tía Maria project. The concluding section discusses the ‘whole-of- manipulation, security provision and social development to maintain
government’ counterinsurgency as the social engineering of extraction, governmental and, in the case below, extractive legitimacy (FM3-24,
recognizing how present institutional arrangements and business im- 2014; Dunlap, 2018a). Pacification and establishing political control,
peratives are designed to override popular socio-ecological concerns as Colonel Erwin Brigham (1968: 27) demonstrates above, is not so-
over the industrial extraction of minerals (see Orozco & Veiga, 2018). lely centered on coercive force, but initiating ‘economic and social
Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state activities’ related to opening roads, waterways ‘and the maintenance
apparatus and politics itself serve as an instrument of social pacification of lines of communication important to economic and military ac-
and ecological exploitation regardless of ecological and climatic con- tivity’. Counterinsurgency combines the brute force of ‘hard’ conven-
cerns. tional warfare and ‘soft’ social warfare strategies that form a larger
mutually reinforcing governmental-corporate strategy, disciplining,
enchanting and engineering the ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ of target popula-
2
On private-public partnerships see Hildyard (2016). tions. This frequently includes, as social war discourse suggests, the pre-
3
Note: one interview is not dated purposely to prevent triangulation of lo- emptive and systematic targeting of non-violent protesters (Dunlap,
cation. Furthermore, select people interviewed insisted on using their real name 2014b, 2016, 2018a; Brock & Dunlap, 2018) to enforce the present
regardless of advice to the contrary. trajectory of political economy.
4
The mean interview length was 28 min. The insights from the emerging field of the political ecology of
12
counterinsurgency are important, yet its theoretical perspectives can necessary for industrial society, its development initiatives and resource
still be further developed. The existing literature retains variegated extraction operations. Thus, the political ecology of counterinsurgency
insights and findings based on historical analysis, emphasis on ‘hard’ dissects institutional arrangements, as well as politics itself, as mili-
coercive military-police operations or ‘soft’ civil-military social tech- tarized environments are progressively normalized into the everyday
nologies among others. While the literature on green militarization and lives of researchers, research participants and landscapes across the
war, to a degree, serve as exceptions, the scholarship on ecological globe.
conflicts rarely acknowledges the extent of violence or the importance The political ecology of counterinsurgency emerges as a study of
of a ‘social war component’. This component is defined as recognizing, social warfare, ‘broadening the notion of conflict’ and deepening
in whole or in part, the various warfare strategies, techniques and methodological approaches to coercion within extractive research
technologies intertwined with shaping landscapes, land deals and pro- (Huff, 2017: 168), offering four preliminary pillars. First, the political
tecting existing ‘green’ or conventional extractive operations. The term ecology of counterinsurgency interrogates the relationships of force or
‘social war; ’ originates from the Roman Social War (91-89 BC), where methods of scientific violence employed to dominate, control and pa-
the Roman Republic learned the indispensability of political conces- cify people to the imperatives of governments, companies or elite fac-
sions and developing techniques for internal stability, as opposed to tions. A central component, related to governmentality (Andreucci &
exclusionary conventional warfare techniques (Dunlap, 2014a; Trocci, Kallis, 2017), is examining legitimacy construction and normalization,
2011). Inclusionary techniques were developed, intervening into the which is linked to targeting and intervening into sociality and socio-
socio-cultural relationships of people by deploying social amenities, cultural relationships of people, hence social warfare (see Dunlap,
rights and citizenship to pacify insurrection and internally stabilize a 2014a). Second, these interventions into people, as Peluso and
growing republic, which are foundational to territorialization processes Vandergeest (2011) document, are often matched by interventions into
(see Rasmussen & Lund, 2018: 388–399) and ‘soft’ counterinsurgency landscapes, non-human natures and space generally. Thirdly, this per-
techniques. Social warfare, it could be said, was an early concessionary spective unravels the horizontality of communal or inter-ethnic conflict,
biopolitical strategy to consolidate and advance imperial power. charting the political economy of social divisions and how racial, caste
Performing the genealogical study of von Clausewitz's (2007/1827: and gendered discourses and fault lines are operationalized in the ser-
7) dictum: ‘war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means’ vice of land control and natural resource extraction. And closely related
(emphasis original), Michel Foucault (2003: 60) finds ‘the great theme to all three, the fourth perspective asks if and how political reactions
and theory of social war’ as the central discourse substantiating von from above are socially engineered in the service of state control, ca-
Clausewitz's assertions. The discourse is summarized best by its 17th pital accumulation or other political and elite agendas.
century proponents, the Diggers: ‘Invasion is a structure not an event,’ Patrick Wolfe (2006: 388)
reminds us, which is the contention of social warfare discourse and, in
We have to defend ourselves against our enemies because the State
large part, the focus of the political ecology of counterinsurgency. In-
apparatuses, the law, and the power structures not only do not de-
terrogating the socio-ecological warfare techniques employed to control
fend us against our enemies; they are the instruments our enemies
natural and human resources, the political ecology of counter-
are using to pursue and subjugate us (Foucault, 2003: 62).
insurgency offers affinity with post-development and decolonization
Social war discourse is an early recognition of biopolitics, articu- theory by actively interrogating the past and present modality of this
lating a radical distrust of state and institutional power, meanwhile structure of invasion, that can be called the ‘colonial matrix of power’,
offering an anti-politics that, different from Ferguson’s (1994), views the ‘the state’, ‘capitalism’, ‘industrialism’ or the ‘techno-industrial system’
Political system, its economy, divisions of labor and hierarchy as a depending on one's perspective. The central focus is examining political
system of subjugation (see Anonymous, 2012; Dunlap, 2014a; Shahin, and environmental control, and the (warfare) techniques and strategies
2016). Relevant to anarchist political ecology (Springer et al., 2019), used to secure it. Said differently, the political ecology of counter-
social war discourse was historically dedicated to revealing ‘the internal insurgency asks, how can any (external) entity, often in lesser numbers,
war or the social war’ waged against populations (Foucault, 2003: 89), enters a region to capture resources, establish governance and maintain
meanwhile counterinsurgency is the science of this war, or ‘the war of a relatively high-level of real or imagined legitimacy (see Foucault,
progress’, designed to affirm the state apparatus, political economy/ 2003; Dunlap, 2014a, 2019)? This is the question being explored
primitive accumulation and cognitive submission to the ideology of around the Tía Maria mine, which details how this popularly contested
(techno-industrial) progress (Dunlap, 2014b: 55). While some claim and controversial mine is invading and attempting to establish legiti-
that ‘there is no basis for this conception’ of politics (Owens, 2017: 7), macy to exploit the mineral resources in the hills of the Tambo Valley.
retired Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen (2012: 130) reminds us that
‘counterinsurgency, then, or counter-insurrection, seems to be an en- 3. Peru: environmental conflicts and security services
during human social institution that has been part of the role of vir-
tually every government in history and perhaps even partly defines The Peruvian state's Defensoría del Pueblo5 registered 224 social
what we mean by the word “state.”’ Moreover, Kilcullen (2012: 145), conflicts in 2013, 149 (67 per cent) were socio-environmental conflicts
acknowledging the current state of media and technology, asserts that and 108 were related to mining activities (Lust, 2014). By 2014, mining
‘today's counterinsurgencies may be 100 percent political’. concessions occupied 20.42% of the country (Romero, 2017: 15), while
Social warfare discourse is the recognition of counterinsurgency mining investment in Peru increase 3.8%, totaling USD 2.833 billion in
operations, while the political ecology of counterinsurgency dissects the August 2017 (MEM, 2018). Organizing the country around an extra-
socio-ecological warfare techniques employed—past and present—to ctivist model of development, an economic growth strategy centered on
control human and non-human resources. This is about unraveling the market-based natural resource demand and extraction (Bebbington,
‘slow (structural) violence’ necessary to construct (Gamu & Dauvergne, 2012; Brundenius, 1972), Peru has been littered with various extraction
2018; Nixon, 2011; Springer & Le Billon, 2016), what Foucault (1995: projects and, consequently, a plethora of environmental conflicts with
168-9) calls, the ‘military dream of society’ working to prefect an ‘in- rural and Indigenous populations (Bebbington et al., 2008: 2888–2905;
ternal peace and order’ based on ‘the mechanism of the perfect army, of Bebbington, 2012; Bebbington & Bury, 2013; Jaskoski, 2014; Arce,
the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in 2014; Gustafson and Solano, 2016). This extractivist development
camp’. This ‘military dream of society’ is industrial society, seeking to model, and resulting conflicts, has made the Peruvian military and
prefect the political economy of populations, economic growth and
resource extraction. The political ecology of counterinsurgency inter-
rogates these relationships of force—coercion—and social engineering 5
See https://www.defensoria.gob.pe/.
13
police, especially the Peruvian National Police (PNP), companions to Threats are understood as ‘criminal actions, assaults, acts of sabotage,
extraction companies. and terrorism,’ which could also include ‘acts of a threat-like nature’
In the 1980s, the Maoist, Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) weapon specified as ‘civil war, invasion, insurgency, strikes, internal unrest,
of choice was dynamite stolen from mines, later used to target civil and civil disturbances, rebellion, vandalism and other criminal and terrorist
extractive infrastructure (McClintock, 2005). The Shining Path engulfed action’ (Grufides, 2013: 10). Jaskoski (2013) demonstrates that the
Peru into revolutionary war in May 1980, which turned into a pro- police—specifically the PNP—have out-performed the military and
longed ‘Dirty War’ lasting until 2000 (see Stern, 1998). The deployment have taken the lead in counterinsurgency operations domestically.
of terrorist tactics by Sendero forces served as a pretext for a series of Notable among the PNP is the DINOES (National Division of Special
laws, Defense System Law (1987), Organic Law of the Defense Ministry Operations) trained for ‘anti-subversive’ activities and deployed to
(1987) and series of decrees in 1991, 2002 and 2007, allowing the support extractive operations (Gustafson and Solano, 2016).
military not only to ‘assume control of internal order’ during States of Expanding counterinsurgency by Peruvian security agencies
Emergency (Jaskoski, 2013: 65), but also to contract with private dovetails with plans from the United States to send over 3000 US
companies. In Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes, Maiah soldiers to PERU for narcotics interdiction and to combat insurgents,
Jaskoski (2013) reveals the military's aversion to engage in domestic which School of the Americas (SOA) Watch (Bravo, 2015: 1) believes
counterinsurgency operations, which made the Peruvian National Po- is ‘a guise for military control and repression of social movements,
lice (PNP) the preferred practitioners. In the 1990s and early 2000s ‘the especially those defending their natural resources’ (see also Paley,
national police increased its participation in counterinsurgency con- 2014). This proliferation of private-public security agreements has
siderably’ against Sendero forces, explains Jaskoski (2013: 75), to the transformed public security forces into private contractors. Fur-
point that ‘the national police force has expanded it counterinsurgency thermore, according to the January 2014 Law No. 30151 members of
activities, potentially encroaching on the army's domain and threa- the armed forces and PNP are exempted from criminal responsibility
tening its future budget share’. While the PNP became the leading if they cause injury or death on duty. Human rights groups have
specialist in counterinsurgency operations, the military's relationship called Law No. 30151 a ‘license to kill’ (FLD, 2017: 2). These ar-
with extractive companies grew. Moreover, the constitution en- rangements are also used by Southern Copper, which registered an
couraged, under ‘resources directly collected’ (RDR) contracts, the agreement in 2010 with PNP XI Dirtepol of Arequipa to ‘provide
military to rent equipment (vehicles, helicopters and specialized gear, extraordinary services’ under an ‘individualized service’6 contract
etc.), infrastructure and personnel to private oil and mineral companies. (Palomino, 2015). Thus impunity is granted under Law No. 30151 to
Contracts were drafted with local army commanders and between the security personnel, which appears to have taken effect during the Tía
years 2003–2005, RDR comprised approximately eight to eleven per- Maria conflict.
cent of the defense budget and could cover between 5 and 50 percent of
military base operating expenses. This work proved highly lucrative for 4. The Tía Maria project & conflict
military commanders and offered benefits for soldiers, such as medi-
cine, discounted airfare and access to more desirable food and lodging Southern began conducting extensive geological and geochemical
(Jaskoski, 2013). Extraction companies became increasingly influential studies in 2003, which was followed by The Ministry of Energy and
in directing military patrols, hiring ‘Peruvian army units to conduct Mines (MEM) granting approval for an environmental impact assess-
counterinsurgency patrols’ and, in some cases, the army ‘conducted ment (EIA) in 2006 (Castillo Fernández et al., 2011). However, since
police work for companies’ (Jaskoski, 2013: 168). Notable among these 2012, the MEM is responsible for approving EIAs and not the Ministry
companies, according to ‘a former private security official’ was of the Environment (Lust, 2014). The Tía Maria project sought to
Southern Copper Peru (Jaskoski, 2013: 171), which ‘received army extract 120 thousand tons of copper cathodes per year for 18 years
protections, suggesting that private mining companies have proved with a 1.4 billion dollar investment and three mining and processing
exceptionally influential in terms of affecting army behavior’. The ‘se- sites. The first mining site is ‘La Tapada’ in the Pampa Yamayo, which
curitisation of strategic resources’ then, as highlighted by Middeldorp is located closest to Cocachacra, El Fiscal and the Tambo River. Ex-
et al. (2016: 934), becomes a reciprocal self-reinforcing process: ‘the emplifying, Stuart Kirsch’s (2014) notion of ‘corporate science’,
military is deployed to guard the extraction in progress, and resource Southern measurements claim that La Tapada is 3 km7 away, while
extraction revenues are in turn invested in the military’. This self-re- independent investigators demonstrate it is 1.2 km8 and locals assert
inforcing cycle is not limited to the extractives sector, and is more that the distance from the Tambo River is between 500 and 700 m.9
broadly implicated in the increasing militarization and marketization of Second is the ‘Tía Maria’ site in Cachuyo area that according to the
nature mentioned above. company is 7 km from the Tambo Valley and, third, the processing and
Under President Alan Garcia (2006–2011) private-public security leaching site in the Pampa Cachendo that is 11 km away from the
partnerships would expand to include the Peruvian National Police Valley (see Fig. 1).
(PNP). The construction of Indigenous land defenders as the ‘internal Southern entered the Tambo Valley in a similar way to wind energy
enemy’ (Andreucci & Kallis, 2017), once reserved for the Shining Path projects in Mexico (Dunlap, 2018b, 2019), which was to approach na-
paved the way for The July 11, 2009 Decree that authorized ‘the pro- tional political bodies, local municipal leaders and, eventually, civil
vision of extraordinary additional services by the Police’ (Grufides, society groups. President of the Broad Front of Defense and Develop-
2013: 9), in the form of two types of contracts: institutional and in- ment Interests in the Islay Province,10 at the time, Catalina Torocahua,
dividualized. Institutional contracts require an agreement between the explained that in ‘2006 the mine became known as a result of usurping
Director-General of PNP and the persons or entity requesting protec- city boundaries’ and by ‘2007 the company entered formally to talk
tion, which can classify as either permanent or occasional services.
Permanent service would be for a specific time period and occasional 6
would be for short requests between one-to-eight hours. The in- With 20% of the amount paid to commissioned and non-commissioned of-
fers directly into the PNP National Bank account.
dividualized ‘extraordinary additional services’ are performed by off- 7
Southern Copper, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
duty police officers, which only require an agreement with the in-
Pd1OL9EEj4k.
dividual officers (Grufides, 2013: 9)—the latter could be read as lega- 8
See minutes 6:30–7:00 of RTVE (2016). La Battalla del Cobre, Available at:
lizing paramilitarism. The PNP are currently servicing over 22 mines in http://www.rtve.es/television/20160823/batalla-del-cobre/1296701.shtml.
over 11 regions with more than 485 police officers working with mining 9
Interviews, 1, 30 & 37.
companies ‘to “prevent, detect and neutralise” threats by means of 10
Frente Amplio de defense y desarrollo de los intereses de la provincial de
precautionary measures, surveillance and patrols’ (Grufides, 2013: 10). Islay.
14
with the authorities: Mayors and leaders’.11 At the time Catalina was destruction,’ ‘it is slow death’ and, referring to social development
trying to start a portable water project for the Valley, called Plan funds: ‘What is the point of having schools, medical clinics, universities
Maestro. Eventually, once a representative from Southern approached if they will be slowly killing us?’17 The link between slow violence and
Catalina, explaining that if she accepted the mine her portable water mining is clear to the majority of residents (Nixon, 2011; Springer & Le
‘plan will be achieved, because the mine is going to give a big Canon Billon, 2016). Furthermore the job opportunities offered by Southern
minero, 12 and supposedly this cannon minero will make this project a are not only limited compared to those offered by agriculture in the
reality’.13 Catalina, aware of the ecological costs of mining, expressed Valley, but they require technical expertise that will discriminate
serious hesitation based on her knowledge of mining in Moquegua, against the young, old and unskilled labors. Romero (2017: 46) con-
Tacna and La Oroya. The representative replied by assuring her that tends that Tía Maria's ‘operation phase would hardly employ 600
there was an ‘abundance of water,’ pollution and particulates from the workers, while the agrarian economy offers jobs to more than 20,000
mine would not spread and cover the crops. Catalina responded by families’. Lastly, like other research participants, Catalina rejects the
asserting that ‘what is logical is that no mayor or leader decides, it idea of authorities approving the Tía Maria mine without achieving the
should be a popular consultation and nobody should oppose this,’ to population's general consent or ‘social license’.
which, according to Catalina, Southern's representative replied: ‘I al- There were three public consultations hosted by Southern in
ready talked to the Mayors and leaders and they already agreed’. November 2007, July 2009 and August 2009. Despite popular skepti-
Opposition to the Tía Maria project was rooted in past experiences cism and distrust rooted in experiences with Ilo, Moquegua, and dis-
with Southern's operations and mining in general. Catalina and other information about the wind currents, the consultations gained steam
research participants referenced a series of mines: La Oroya, a distant and the company offered three methods of mine water use, from the
copper smelter; Moquegua14 and Toquepala15 mineral mines operated river, ground or sea water. During the August 2009 consultation, the
by Southern in the neighboring province; Tacna operated by Minsur; EIA did not favor desalination of sea water and residents—based on
Cerro Verde copper mine; and, most importantly, Southern's smelting finding identity cards they found18—claimed that Southern bused
facility in Ilo. People claim that Ilo produced acid rain in the Tambo people into the consultation ‘from the outside,’ notably students from
Valley, killing all the olive trees in the 1970s, which is a common story the National University of San Augustine in Arequipa to fabricate
linked to the belief that Southern authorized the assassination of consent for the mine (Romero, 2017). Consultations as spaces for
agronomist and opponent of the Ilo smelter, Carlos Guillén Carrerra on manufacturing consent is common (see Bebbington, 2012; Dunlap,
October 2, 1998.16 2017b: 1–21; Gamu & Dauvergne, 2018), yet this triggered a riot and
Previous experiences with mining projects combined with the assaults against representatives of Southern with rocks, sticks and
Tambo Valley's strong agrarian culture laid the foundations for ardent plastic chairs19 (Jaskoski, 2014). Now the Defense Front and Interests
resistance. There are about 40,000 people, José Romero’s (2017) con- of the Tambo Valley inspired by previous struggles in Tambogrand and
tends in his new book—Lo Que Los Ojos No Ven (What the Eyes Do Not Minera Majaz (Arce, 2014), began to implement Catalina's idea to hold
See)—that are anchored directly or indirectly into the agrarian a popular consultation (consulta popular) against Tía Maria and its EIA.
economy. Cocachacra, according to Romero (2017), consist of 2000 In October 2009 the Defense Front organized the popular consultation
plantation owners, 7000 small holders and renters along with 8000 day in Cocachaca, Punta de Bombón and Deán Valdivia, resulting in 93.4%
laborers (Jornaleros). The district of Cocachacra, based on 2007 census rejection of the Tía Maria project by the voters (Sullivan, 2015). This
data, consists of 47.15% agricultural activity, 11.72% in retail trade, led to continued organizing, widespread protest and strikes called
5.63% in transportation, 4.36% in hotels, 4.16% in construction and against Southern in 2010 (Bedregal & Scott, 2013), while 4000 PNP
3.53% in mining and quarries (Romero, 2017: 21). While people en- were ready to enter the Valley the MEM opted to contract the United
gaged in agriculture also engage in small commercial operations, the Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS) to evaluate the Tía Maria
Cocachacra demographic is similar in other districts, often with agri- EIA (Castillo Fernández et al., 2011; Jaskoski, 2014). Then in March,
culture in the 60th percentile (see Romero, 2017: 21–30). The backbone just before UNOPS would release the report, the contract was cancelled,
and existence of the Tambo Valley is agriculture, which retains not only due to budgetary constraints by MEM (Sullivan, 2015). The UNOPS
a strong agrarian economy, but also a culture that the mine is generally report, however, was leaked, revealing 138 observations including
understood as threatening. missing a hydrological study and failure to recognize other minerals
There are three principle reasons why the populace rejects the mine: (e.g. molybdenum, silver, gold) in the concession (Castillo Fernández
(1) ground water usage; (2) contamination of the groundwater and (3) et al., 2011: 80-3; Sullivan, 2015). When it became clear that the
air pollution. Southern claims that the wind blows on shore, implying government would ignore UNOPS′ 138 observations an indefinite strike
that the wind will not carry mining particulates into the Valley, yet as was organized for March 23, 2011.
Catalina and others pointed out the winds current shifts daily between The state responded with repression. The PNP flooded the area,
on-and-off shore, highlighting a popular misconception propagated by police attacked and protests escalated, which gave rise to the now in-
Southern that entrenches existing distrust. Regarding socio-ecological famous Espartambos (Fig. 2).20 Referencing the Spartans from the film
impact, it was common for residents to feel that ‘the mine is only 300 in the Tambo Valley, these individuals took a position of combative
self-defense against the police, widely recognized for grabbing large
sheets of tin and wood to use as shields to block the rubber bullets, bird
11
Interview 1, 13-01-2018. shot and rocks of the police. The conflict escalated, with the police
12
The 1992 canon minero law, allows 20% of corporate mining tax be allo- shooting and killing four: Adrés Taipe Chuquipuma on April 4th fol-
cated to the territories where companies operate. In 2001 the canon minero was lowed by Néstor Cerezo Patana, Aurelio Huarcapuma Clemente and
raised to 50% and extended this tax to other extractive activities (see Miguel Ángel Pino on April 7th, 2011 (Sullivan, 2015). This led the
Bebbington, 2012, p. 92). government to temporarily pull back from the Tía Maria project as the
13
Interview 1, 13-01-2018. strike paralyzed the valley and the conflict sowed terror and resent-
14
http://larepublica.pe/archivo/704641-tacna-fiscalia-investiga-a-southern-
ment.
por-presunta-contaminacion.http://larepublica.pe/politica/978337-pasto-
grande-pide-demolicion-de-cancha-de-relaves-de-southern.http://www.
radiouno.pe/noticias/23662/viceministros-se-negaron-ingresar-embalse-
17
relaves-quebrada-honda. Interview 11, 13-01-18; Interview 20, 15-01-18; & Interview 34, 17-01-18.
15 18
See https://ejatlas.org/conflict/cuajone-toquepala-ilo-peru. Interview, 42, 18-01-2018.
16 19
http://elpueblo.com.pe/noticia/opinion/quien-mato-carlos-guillen-carrera See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzAKk_snE-E.
20
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvC5PARFWGg. Interview 2, 12-01-2018.
15
Fig. 2. Espartambos on the frontlines battling police and their armored vehicles, 2015. Photo: Miguel Mejía Castro.
This victory, however, was short-lived. Southern launched an in- employs a cultural device from the Dirty War that constructed (dark-
formation campaign to re-enter the Valley, which then, according to skinned) rural and Indigenous people as subhuman, fanatical and
Carlos Aranda, Southern's national head of ‘community relations,’ in violent terrorists (Aguirre, 2011), thus criminalizing and justifying
late 2012 were ‘summoned by the Ministry of Energy and Mines’ and scorched-earth counterinsurgency tactics against highland popula-
‘they told us that: “we are willing to give it another chance, so let's go tions during the war. This trend has continued since (Bebbington,
ahead with Tia Maria.”’21 The government imposed three conditions on 2012; Andreucci & Kallis, 2017), and recently after Primitivo Evanán's
Southern: (1) a desalination plant; (2) redo the social impact study; and exhibition, at The Art Museum of Lima (MALI), was slandered as ‘ter-
(3) comply with the UNOPS observations. Aranda, explains: ‘We did all rorism apologetics’ (apología al terrorismo), Journalist Gabriela Wiener
three of them’.22 In January 2013, Southern began a full-spectrum (2018), highlighting this socio-political device coined the verb ‘terru-
public relations campaign, and it began a new EIA in November 2013. quear’ to refer to a ‘political strategy that uses the fear of terrorism for
Meanwhile, people commenced hunger strikes against Tía Maria in its benefit’ (Trelles, 2018: n.p). Morriberón, and, later, Aranda (see La
Arequipa in December and October 2013 (Romero, 2017). Eventually, Republica, 2018: n.p), we can say are ‘terruqueadores’, people who are
however, the new EIA was approved on August 2014, as MEM claimed operationalizing the discourse of terrorism from the Dirty War to en-
that all the observations were resolved. Despite the deaths, investment courage, and subsequently, justify, police and military intervention to
risk and popular opposition, the government decided to permit the enforce the operation of the Tía Maria mine.
project. In April, the conflict further escalated. Three residents were mur-
The Mining Conflict Observatory (OCM), however, found the same dered by security forces: Victoriano Huayna Nina, Henery Checlla
issues as with the previous EIA regarding the hydrogeological and Chura and Ramón Colque, and one police officer, Alberto Vásquez, was
subsoil analysis, and the lack of information about the clearing tank and killed. This eventually gave way to President Ollanta Humala declaring
crushing plant. Other objections related to particulates from construc- a State of Emergency on May 9, 2015, involving the presence of 3000
tion, and the risk of sulphuric acid evaporation that could cause acid police and 2000 military personnel (Romero, 2017). The next section
rain. Moreover, the new study evaded assessments on the desalination will explore the state terrorism and ‘hard’ counterinsurgency tactics
plant's impacts on nearby wetland conservation,23 and also neglected deployed during the police invasions and State of Emergency to enforce
community participation in the study (Romero, 2017; Sullivan, 2015). mineral extraction.
These irregularities led the Defense Front to request UNOPS to review
the new EIA, which was denied. 5. Terrorizing the valley: the state, PNP & military
Once negotiations broke down an indefinite strike was called on
March 23, 2015. Again, the Valley erupted in protests, road blockades The contested approval of the EIA and the deployment of the PNP
and eventually combat with PNP. Then Southern's Tía Maria head of and, later, military against the strike only reinforced the existing belief
‘community relations,’ Julio Morriberón, declared on March 27th once that the politicians nationally and locally had been bought by Southern.
again, the retirement of the Tía Maria project, first due to, ‘the on- ‘The politicians just want to fill their pockets because they do not care
slaught of a new type of terrorism, anti-mining terrorism’ and ‘secondly, about the consequences, the consequences that will affect every-
the paralysis of the state in its role of promoting investments and giving one—they are not going to live here,’ explains a disgruntled mother,
the necessary guarantees to get them started’ (Daly, 2015, n.p.). Tap- ‘they promise us [to terminate Tía Maria] every time they come here,
ping into the socio-politico discourse of terruco, or terrorist, Southern but when they enter as presidents they begin to agree with the contracts
and all of this—they are cheats.24 President Humala came to the Tambo
Valley before election in 2011 proclaiming that Tía Maria ‘must be
21
Interview 24, 16-01-18.
22
Interview 24, 16-01-18.
23 24
Interview 47, 18-02-18. Interview 10, 13-01-2018.
16
revoked’ and that the people's ‘voice has a binding character before any monitored the area with drones; and patrolled the air with helicopters
political decision,’25 then four years later declared a State of Emergency that also fired tear gas and dropped rocks on the demonstrators. They
against the Valley asking that the ‘full weight of the law come down on further engaged in acts designed to create depredation and psycholo-
these criminals, murderers and extortionists’.26 Local politicians and gical stress burning rice fields; and even attacking funeral processions
administrators tend to have a more antagonistic dynamic with the with teargas for people killed during the demonstrations; as well as the
mine, but, as Romero (2017: 54) reveals, there are ‘mining candidates’ repeated accounts of police framing people once they were arrested.
sponsored by Southern ‘with the aim of legitimizing and promoting Remembering Kali's event described in the introduction, another in-
their interests’. In December 2017, Yamila Osario, the current governor stance is the case of Antonio ‘Miguelito’ Coasaca. On April 23, 2015 the
of Arequipa, accepted a 770,000 soles (approx. USD 235,503) donation PNP DINOES division beat and dragged Coasaca down the highway,
a week before announcing Tía Maria will begin operations in March then concussed, the police broke his hand and forced a caltrop into it.
2018.27 The Odebrecht bribery scandal, which placed ex-president Subsequently, they called a nearby journalist over to take a photograph
Humala and his wife in pre-trial detention and caused President Pedro as evidence. This police action was documented on video32 and later
Pablo Kuczynski to resign, serves as a high-profile reminder of the dropped in court.33 The lawyer Héctor Herrera, who defended Coasaca
systemic political corruption residents' associate with the Tía Maria and over 120 people from the Valley during this period, remembers: ‘I
project.28 Distrust and contempt for politicians would characterize the also have people who were planted with bullets, dynamite and ev-
majority of interviews, but, in a neoliberal regime (see Springer, 2016), eryday somebody arrives to me with rocks, sticks and Hondas and the
the line between bribery and contract negotiations, the public and police saying: “I saw him with that.”’ Herrera continues, ‘here is a de-
transnational private sector is increasingly fine. linquent state who ordered the police to plant evidence and prosecutors
The Tambo Valley residents are convinced that the PNP and military that collaborated with them’.34 This legal action was prefaced with
work for Southern. ‘In reality it is not the state that declared the State of people claiming that police would cover up evidence by taking bodies
Emergency, it's the project that induced the state through the power from hospitals, which would additionally delay and prevent medical
they have to declare a State of Emergency, for what? Why? … to care. ‘[N]ot only did they kill us,’ explains Kali, ‘but when we wanted to
minimize protests,’ says a conservationist who continues: ‘there are take the body of our brother they threw tear gas canisters and they
cities with crime, theft and a lot of bad things, but there are no police,’ prevented us from taking our dead’.35 Stating that Ramón Colque ‘bled
but ‘there are police to defend a project, a hill, but there are no police to to death’ and ‘a lot of people wanted to help him, but ‘the police did not
defend and take care of the population—that is strange, no?’29 South- allow us,’ explains a woman continuing that the police ‘stole the body
ern's Carlos Aranda, however, describes the situation in 2011 this way: from the clinic and I think they wanted to disappear him or something
like that’.36 Scuffles over corpses and the wounded in clinics and hos-
We had three people that were killed in this process. Not because
pitals were frequent during the indefinite strikes.
they were on our property or in part of the project, they were killed
The violent behavior of the police only escalated during the State of
because the mob decided to block the roads and in Peru that is il-
Emergency. Police cut off the lights in the Valley, threw rocks and
legal. When they went to block a major highway, like Pan American
teargas into houses and conducted night raids on houses of suspected
South, and they blocked it for days, the police came in and violence
organizers or Espartambos. Two women explain:
took over the Valley and three people died.30
W1: It was a terrible abuse, terrible abuse and they did whatever
Southern representatives stress that Southern adheres to ‘environ-
they wanted with us. They entered into the houses at four in the
mental regulations’ and the ‘rule of law,’ while the protesters do not.
morning to take out all the young people, because snitches were
What ‘happened is regrettable, your little deaths (muertitos), rest in
whispering.
peace, who died in these protests,’ says Tía Maria's head of Community
Relations continuing to assert that ‘it's true that Southern, like every W2: By pointing people out … they entered into Maria's house in the
human being, also has the capacity to say, “stop.”31 Aside from the poor middle of the night to take out her husband.
choice of words, ‘muertitos,’ this statement defends the transnational
Q: With what reason?
corporation's right to stop popular oppositions to their operations.
The 2015 indefinite strike unleashed the fury of the state (Fig. 4). It W2: They said that he was an Espartambo.
began with marches and road blockades (Fig. 3), with women, children
Later in the conversation this second woman recounts the police telling
and the elderly leading the demonstrations, when, according to most
her to ‘shut up you shitty terrorist,’ when she was pleading with them not to
accounts, ‘the police came and pushed, used their batons and then the
throw tear gas into her house where her sick mother with bronchitis and ‘a
people also used sugarcane sticks and the police began to use teargas
delicate heart’ was living. The police did anyway and they had to get her to
bombs. Then the people responded with whatever they had’. In 2011
the hospital in Arequipa.37 The trauma left by the police would surface with
and 2015 police actions were brutal: beating people; shooting tear gas,
eyes of rage, fear and tears. During interviews older women would re-
slinging rocks from Hondas and even firing bullets at people. On the
peatedly break into tears remembering how the police chased, beat and
tactical front they deployed undercover police and informants;
dragged people down the street or when the police would raid houses at
night dragging people out of bed, while children stood naked in the street
25
See Mollendinostv (2016). Ollanta Humala ¿traicionó a su palabra?
Consulta. Availible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFr2PEVToWY &
32
Reuters (2018). La Battalla del Cobre, available at: http://www.rtve.es/ La República (2015). Video muestra que policía “sembró” arma a mani-
television/20160823/batalla-del-cobre/1296701.shtml. festante contra Tía María | VIDEO. Available at: http://larepublica.pe/politica/
26
See Tv Perú (2015). Mensaje a la Nación del Presidente Ollanta Humala. 872285-video-muestra-que-policia-sembro-arma-a-manifestante-contra-tia-
Availible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bselvRy_cjY. maria-video.
27 33
See La República (2017). Available at: http://larepublica.pe/politica/ Redacción (2017). Absuelven a agricultor a quien ‘sembraron’ arma dur-
1154229-gra-recibira-donacion-de-s770-mil-de-southern. ante protestas contra Tía María. Availible at: http://rpp.pe/peru/arequipa/
28
See BBC (2017) Odebrecht case: Politicians worldwide suspected in bribery absuelven-a-agricultor-a-quien-sembraron-arma-durante-protestas-contra-tia-
scandal. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america- maria-noticia-1071324.
34
41109132. Interview 42, 18-01-2018.
29 35
Interview 26, 16-01-2018. Interview 2.2, 19-01-2018.
30 36
31 37
17
Fig. 3. Protestors stand behind a barricade in Cocachacra. Photo: Miguel Mejía Castro.
Fig. 4. The PNP and DINOES′ with a South African style armored transport vehicles. Photo: Miguel Mejía Castro.
screaming in tears. Meanwhile, the military stood by holding assault rifles military refrains from domestic operations, but also Hanna Arendt's (1962/
watching (Fig. 5), and by some accounts even criticized the behavior of the 1951: 289) early observations of the enhanced abilities of police to dispense
police. One person recounted that one military officer even said, ‘sometimes terror.
I want to grab my weapon and shoot the police. Because I do not like how Because of the brutal behavior and murders by the police, along with
they treat the old women—they push and kick them’.38 Not only does this them having ‘long hair, scars on their face, beards, [and] tattoos,’39 people
resonate with earlier accounts by Jaskoski (2013), that the Peruvian were convinced that these were not police, but rather mine security
38 39
Interview 40, 18-01-2018. Interview 1, 2, 17, 19, 26, 40 & 41.
18
Fig. 5. Military helicopter hovers over the rice patties, while soldiers stand guard. Photo: Miguel Mejía Castro.
personnel—‘they weren't police they were miners dressed like police, yes, reality it is nothing. So they handle it this way. So what does an Internal
contracted by Southern’.40 An ex-military private security contractor, in the Affairs do? They begin to check up on the leader’ and if the leader
business for over fifteen years, ‘Jim’ explained that ‘apart of the intelligence begins asking for more or breaks his deal by protesting to negotiate for
service here in Peru, exist the famous mercenaries’ that are sent to the more money with the extraction company, then ‘sometimes they are in
‘frontlines’ of conflicts, ‘because when the police commit excesses, they get charge of disappearing him from the map’. This resonates with the Pepe
in trouble’. According to Jim, the police contract mercenaries for purposes Julio Gutiérrez case, former Tambo Valley Defense Front leader, who in
of plausible deniability, which complements accounts in 2015 that the PNP January 2018 was sentenced to thirty years-six months for negotiating
had unknown name tags that read ‘FilosofeXXX’ (Palomino, 2015). When 1.5 million ‘lentils’ to end the indefinite strike with a lawyer from
asking Jim about this he replied: ‘In some cases, they dress by themselves Southern in 2015.44 Romero (2017: 99) contends this was a strategy to
like police, because they also want to protect themselves’. This concern fragment the social movement, which remains plausible as Southern's
overlapped with the deployment of undercover police and informants in the lawyer was not brought to court. This case resonates with General
demonstrations; many were caught and confessed that they were paid 100 Kitson’s (2010/1971:69–71) recommendations on how to use the law as
soles to attend meetings and demonstrations.41 Isabel explains: ‘When method to neutralize activists and ‘disposal of unwanted members of
people captured infiltrators, more than three or four people, also women, the public’ (see also Churchill, 2002/1989: 44). Nevertheless, the dark
they would punish them because they were paid by the mine to infiltrate, side of environmental conflicts is revealed—cooptation, assassination
but we already knew who they were. When we see people we do not know, and ‘neutralization’ by every means. Finally, referring to this research,
we already know it's them’.42 During the State of Emergency informants Jim concluded: ‘The things that you are doing are intelligence work
were also used to point out the homes of protest organizers and Espar- and, so they have their team of counter-intelligence, I hope that this
tambos—‘So there were police infiltrators and they took notes where people [research] does not become detected at any moment; otherwise you are
live, and in the night the police would abduct people’.43 going to have very serious troubles’.
Herrera suggests the possible presence of Grupo Terna, a division of When discussing the political violence in the Valley during
undercover police. Jim, however, explained that not only in ‘the ma- 2011–2015, people at the demonstrations or families of the dead were
jority of the cases’ mining companies ‘work with DINOES,’ but that convinced that snipers were present at the demonstrations. For ex-
‘every mining and oil company has their own [secret] service that we ample, Nestor ‘got shot in the head, which is not a lost or accidental
call, special services’. This security contractor continued to explain how bullet. We are not that foolish—we recognized that a sniper was
every resource extraction company in Peru has something called there’.45 Raising this question to Jim elicited this response:
‘Internal Affairs’ (asuntos internos), which is the extraction companies
That is what we call asymmetric warfare. So with this they [the
‘intelligence service,’ largely staffed by ex-military and security per-
company] tell you, “if you continue irritating me, the same is going
sonnel, that specializes in ‘counter-intelligence’ and is responsible for
to happen to you.” This is another way to debilitate the group, if you
neutralizing opposition against the mine and stifling attempts at cor-
are the principle head [protests leader] and you move twenty
porate espionage and concession theft. Jim explained that the job of
people, I am not going to kill him [another person], I want to kill
internal affairs was to pacify opposition, which included negotiating
you. Because when I neutralize you, I weaken all of them. And now,
‘one million’ soles with local opposition leaders to stop protests for a
who is going to direct them? Nobody is going to direct them, so this
certain amount of time and continues: ‘So they deceive them with a
group has to create another and I come back and I kill him again.
medical clinic, I do not know, with a donation of clothes for kids, or
blankets, so something that looks great for the community, but in Q: And for the asymmetric warfare, how involved are the mining
40 44
Interview 19, 15-01-2018. La Republica (2018) Tía María: Piden 30 años de prisión para Pepe Julio
41
FN, 14-01-2018; Interview 2.2, 12-01-2018. Gutiérrez. Available at: http://larepublica.pe/sociedad/1172269-piden-30-
42
Interview 12, 14-01-2018. anos-de-prision-para-pepe-julio-gutierrez.
43 45
19
companies in strategies of asymmetric warfare?

Southern's approach in the Tambo Valley closely resembled the
They always do it, they always use it. As I told you they use it to
principles of integrated monetary shaping operations to ‘win’ the
debilitate the group.
‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ of the population to mitigate resistance and gain
Q: Asymmetric warfare is part of what they have to do? ‘social license’ for the Tía Maria project.
In January 2013, Southern Copper began a full-spectrum ‘inter-
It's part of the process.
vention’49 into the social life of the Tambo Valley. This first began with
Q: Its always part of the process? ‘Plan Reencuentro’ that would invest 100 million soles (approximately
USD 30.6 million) into disseminating Tía Maria information with 46
This case is more the last resort. When the situation gets very dif-
volunteers going door-to-door, offering to paint and giving new con-
ficult … when a problem has been created that cannot be controlled.
crete floors to houses (Romero, 2017). Aranda, explains: ‘[W]e started
When they cannot control the situation with money, this is the last
doing things, like paint your house, because after the violence a lot of
resort and especially when the leader, for example receives 1 million
the houses were left in really bad shape with graffiti and you know that
[soles], but in two or three months he goes and asks for more
sort of thing’.50 House painting, especially after 2015, served a dual
money.
purpose of community relations, but also to paint over the anti-
This animates where and how the ‘soft’ and then ‘hard’ approaches Southern graffiti in the region. Social development, mining public re-
to managing opposition meet, demonstrating the intricate relationship lations and ‘Broken Windows’ theory—the theory that visible symbols
between counterinsurgency and resource extraction operations. While of civil disorder, or political opposition, encourage further crime (see
Jim did not work for Southern, he confirms that there are people ‘still in Williams, 2007: 211–212)—comes into confluence in counter-
the army … working intelligence … with them’.46 It is clear, however, insurgency strategy.
that ‘without asymmetric warfare techniques the protesters can pa- People in the Valley, however, saw what was happening and, in
ralyze the mining operations, and in one day the company will lose Aranda's words, ‘some of them [staff] had been kicked out of the
millions’ (see Franks et al., 2014). This intimately emphasizes the im- Valley. They ran away, there were threats made to their lives, people
portance of counterinsurgency in extractive research, offering details tried to burn their houses and [vehicles,] so they left the Valley’. This
into the techniques of political violence employed in an attempt to terminated ‘Plan Reencuentro,’ which was later revived as ‘Future
render the land investable and the minerals extractable. Arrived’ (El Futuro Llegó) in 2015 while the second EIA was under
review. This initiative, however, ended with the indefinite strike and
6. Developing the valley: public relations, social development & State of Emergency—shifting from social warfare to military occupa-
valleunido tion of the Valley. Southern ‘pulled everyone out,’ recounts Aranda,
‘we did not do anything in the Valley, but what we decided to do was a
The intensity of police violence was matched by Southern's ‘in- very strong information campaign outside Arequipa, we did it in the
formation campaigns,’ ‘community relations’ teams and development rest of the country’. Aranda did interviews with newspapers, radio and
programs that, one woman said, ‘entered into everything!’47 Catalina television stations, in addition to buying advertisement space in the
agrees, ‘they are in everything, they are in education, they are in health rest of the country, until ‘finally, the current Governor said, “You
care’.48 Southern's operations have entered into just about every facet should be doing this in Arequipa.” The radios and the television said:
of Tambo Valley life, manifesting an extractive biopolitics, rooted in “You should be doing this here.” So then we came back, because one
counterinsurgency tactics to secure access to subsoil resources. This thing is for you to come back without anyone asking you and another
socially integrative biopolitical approach is consistent with, and ani- is when someone asks you to return’.51 The main justification to return
mated by, previous research on ‘soft’ counterinsurgency and corporate in 2015 came from the Governor of Arequipa and the radio and tele-
social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Brock & Dunlap, 2018; Dunlap, vision stations, the latter of which Southern is known to control. Ac-
2018a,b; Dunlap & Fairhead, 2014; Marijnen, 2017; Verweijen & cording to Romero (2017: 58), Southern retains ‘control over more
Marijnen, 2018). Research has linked extraction company social inter- than thirteen local radios that exist in the Islay Province and Tambo
ventions to the Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies Field Manual (FM3- Valley’. Reportedly, a brief case from a head journalist contained re-
24, 2014) chapter titled ‘Indirect Methods for Countering Insurgencies,’ ceipts for thousands of journalists that were paid by Southern on the
specifically the approach known as ‘integrated monetary shaping opera- quantity and quality of criticism lodged at mining opponents (Romero,
tions’ (Dunlap, 2018a,b; Brock & Dunlap, 2018). ‘Integrated monetary 2017: 58). It seems that the media, national and regional governments
shaping operations are the coordinated use of money, goods, or services were the ones in favor of Southern returning—and less so the residents
to support’ the goals of security forces (or mining companies), using of the Valley.
‘developmental assistance, infrastructure, and governance support Then enters Valleunido in 2016, Southern's ‘community relations’
projects to win the support of an indigenous populace and erode sup- third wave (Fig. 6). Valleunido—‘Valley United’—consisted of 27
port for the adversary’ (FM3-24, 2014: 10–11). There is a strong rela- people responsible for the ‘information centers,’ going door-to-door
tion between US and Peruvian counterinsurgency (Koven, 2016), which everyday with information brochures and implementing social devel-
even extends to FM3-24 (2014: 8-1) explicitly referencing Peru as opment projects with the goal, in the words of ‘Tía Maria's Social Re-
successfully employing integrated monetary shaping operations: lations Manager,’ to have ‘the Tía Maria project viewed as an oppor-
tunity and not as a threat’. Largely recruiting people indigenous to the
Peru demonstrates that intelligence capabilities can be integrated
Valley, Valleunido developed a corporate culture (see Dugger, 1989)
with information operations and integrated monetary shaping op-
that allows members to co-create the group name, brain storming ses-
erations to successfully undermine an insurgency. The Peruvian
sions to better reach the population and a collective identity. ‘So we
government was eventually successful in using economic develop-
gave them information, we trained them,’ says Aranda, ‘we actually had
ment and an information campaign to weaken the Shining Path
training days for them where we explained what mining is, what the
insurgency.
project was, how we do mining in our operations, what environmental
46
This quote is fragmented to prevent the identification of this research
49
participant. Interview 24, 16-01-2018.
47 50
48 51
20
Fig. 6. Southern Copper's ‘Project Tía Maria Building Trust’ book cover. Source: Valleunido.
concerns we have and what we do for those concerns’.52 This also in- to pay 25 million soles’ (approximately USD 7.6 Million) for three
cludes pep rallies and measuring the impact of Valleunidos' efforts studies for a hospital in Mollendo. Finally, community interventions
using census consultants, sociologists and anthropologists. Notably, also included three Oficinas Informativas (information centers) in Punta
Aranda makes the distinction between ‘community relations’ and Bombón, Deán Valdivia and Cocachacra (Southern, 2016: 1–55), which
‘public relations,’ explaining that public relations ‘is mainly for inter- were located on mains streets and, in Cocachacra, behind the PNP
actions between our higher authorities in the company with the station. These information centers were akin to internet cafes, except
mayors, the church, social things like festivities,’ while community re- they had a staff ready to discuss the benefits of the Tía Maria project,
lations ‘are much more hands on—working with the farmers, working have you sit and watch Southern's promotional videos as well as
with the cattle ranchers and the things that we do with the population’. handout promotional material and posters from Southern, the MEM,
Valleunido's community interventions fall under the later program: PNP and Jehovah's Witness. Asking a mother in Punta Bombón if they
Construyamos Confianza Proyecto Tía Maria (Project Tía Maria Building have ever heard of these internet cafes, they replied: ‘Yes, I heard about
Trust), which approached the community on six socio-ecological fronts. this place, but I never go, but people told me you have to go with your
First, Tambo Agricola that worked to improve soil quality, offering free identification card and sign and then you can leave’.54 While this was
fertilizers, pesticides, and ‘high-quality’ seeds, in addition to classes on not my experience, other accounts are similar.
‘improved’ rice growing techniques. Additionally, Southern repaired There have been three Valleunidos impact reports that, according to
irrigation canals and promoted mechanization of agriculture techni- Aranda, can be summarized as: (1) ‘They do not like you; ’ (2) ‘we
ques. Second Tambo Ganadero was a program geared to improve cattle showed improvement …. [but] Yeah not so good; ’ and (3) ‘this last one
and livestock by offering educational workshops, free straw, staffing is a bit better. We are actually … pinpointing areas where we have to
veterinarians and offering nitrogen tanks to allow the optimal condition improve’. Southern uses social scientists, anthropologists and, more
for cattle insemination. According to Southern, this project has ‘im- frequently, sociologists in an attempt to guide development interven-
proved the quality of both the cows and pigs’ with ‘an increment of 13 tions and measure their impact at convincing the population to accept
or a bit more increase in milk production’.53 Third, Mejora tu Vividenda, the Tía Maria project. While studies revealed Deán Valdivia as being
offered Rotoplas portable water tanks and concrete floors for homes, irreconcilable, these operations are consistent with research findings
while also renovating water infrastructure in select towns. Fourth, studying controversial wind energy projects in Mexico (Dunlap, 2018a,
Apoyo a la Educacíon provided school materials, computers, uniforms, 2019) and reminiscent of anthropologists and other social scientists
after school programs and painted and repaired parts of the school. measuring the impact of the resettlement and development programs in
Fifth, Apoyo a la Salud, invested in medical clinics, 24 h medical pro- Vietnam and elsewhere (Owens, 2015; Price, 2014). ‘The engineering of
fessionals, dentists, educational classes and, even, ‘has paid or is about consent,’ Edward Bernays (1947: 118) explains: ‘learns what group
leaders know and do not know, the extent to which they will cooperate
52
Interview 24, 16-01-2018.
53 54
21
with him, the media that reach them, appeals that may be valid, and the Batemans (2010: 74) critique of microfinance as ‘poverty-pushed en-
prejudices, the legends, or the facts by which they live’. This demon- trepreneurship’—where abject poverty pushes people into microfinance
strates how (often banal types of) knowledge can be weaponized and schemes. While organizing deprivation is a classic technique of colonial
how social scientists are instrumental to the social engineering extrac- counterinsurgency,64 so is the deployment of social amenities and gifts
tion. to get people to accept political control. It was widely recorded, how-
Social warfare is the process of social engineering. The operations of ever, that Tambo Valley residents would take the benefits, but remained
Valleunido, Internal Affairs and their integrated monetary shaping ap- in complete opposition to the mine.
proach specialize in the social engineering of populations to con- Human terrain studies, public relations and engaging in social de-
venience them to relinquish their natural resources. In this sense in- velopment praxis, as it combines with state repression, also exploit local
terventions into people become an intervention into the land. The social prejudices. The first was popularly conceived racism, dividing owning
engineering of extraction then seeks to break opposition, which in- farmers from day labors. The racist discourse was especially salient in
cludes the people's connections with the land, water and their liveli- La Punta, among older Criollo's and municipal administrators. One
hoods. Meanwhile, progressively trying to isolate, criminalize and de- municipal agent states:
moralize land defenders (see Birss, 2017; Gedicks, 2015; Middeldorp
The farmers, the real native farmers, they are not the people who
et al., 2016; Rasch, 2017; Verweijen, 2017: 1–17), so as to gain ‘social
made the strikes. The people who made the strikes are the workers
license’ through popular acceptance or, more likely after police and
of the farmers, they are the people who work every day in the
military interventions, exhaustion and fear-induced acquiescence. The
field—the people who fill their pockets with agricultural money.65
calculus of the company, it must be remembered, measures acceptance
based on the intensity of protest and disruption, or the lack thereof.55 The day labors are typically migrants from Cusco, Puno and else-
A decisive political technology, according to Aranda, was the where in the highlands (Romero, 2017), which are home to large In-
creation of ‘community committees’ which decide what is important to digenous populations. This view was tied up with a conservative wel-
their communities and what needs to be solved. Aranda, summarizing fare narrative that disparaged the communal food system Payapando
their initial formation, explains: ‘Listen, do not come and tell us that and claimed that the day labors receive welfare and do not bare the
you need an airport that is out of the question, but if you see something agricultural overhead of tractors, fertilizers and pesticides.66 This nar-
that has to do with health, education, environment, culture or what- rative creates a division between migrant day labors and owners, and,
ever, bring it here’.56 Community committees allowed Southern to be additionally, combines with claims that the Espartambos are agent
strategic with their distribution of funds and create a participatory provocateurs from outside the Valley. This external provocateur nar-
culture. Central to controlling local communities', Hochmuller and rative is a textbook disinformation tactic across the world (see
Muller (2017: 175) remind us, 'is "community input," which can be Gelderloos, 2013), which according to many is completely untrue since
translated into civil-military intelligence. This rural development ‘the Espartambos are from here, they are sons of Tambeños’.67 Research
strategy deserves acknowledgement for addressing the Valley's social participants repeatedly claimed that ‘everyone was united’68 and ‘ev-
needs, but is unfortunately employed as a weapon of persuasion in the eryone from here went to the protest, it was all the people who worked
service of resource acquisition, ‘economic gain’ and to ‘to have Tia in agriculture’.69 One teacher explains that ‘there are a lot of racist
Maria working,’57 not for the sake of supporting the developmental people,’ meanwhile another woman says Southern ‘take[s] advantage of
aspirations of the community. this … they manage all of this’,70 suggesting that they are exploiting a
These counter-insurrectionary social interventions seeking the po- discourse that blames opposition and/or combative self-defense on
pulations' approval were intelligent. Nevertheless, the damage was darker skinned day labors and not the so-called ‘real native farmers’.
done. The local response to social development was largely negative:
‘It's a scam,’58 ‘Blackmail,’59 and its purpose ‘is to change our men-
tality’.60 Another woman says, ‘the “help” are like small pills to calm 7. Conclusion: business is warfare by other means
people down’.61 The portable water, concrete floors, fertilizer and so,
required a signature that the people were convinced was being col- Providing a brief chronological narrative of the conflict and key
lected to show the MEM as proof of ‘social license’. For example, one events, this article has demonstrated the political reactions ‘from above’
woman contends that Southern has ‘a strategy, they say “I am going to from both the Peruvian state and Southern Copper that mirror a whole-
give you a floor in your house, but you have to sign this piece of paper of-government counterinsurgency approach designed to socially en-
with your identification card.” …. So they did not give you things be- gineer a pathway for natural resource extraction. Not surprisingly, the
cause it is a gift, ‘no,’ they did it in order to collect signatures to bring it company itself denies this. ‘Let's be honest here,’ I said to Tía Maria's
to Lima and present the documents that the people signed here to agree head of Community Relations, ‘isn't the job of Valleunido akin to con-
with the mine’, but ‘everybody knows that this is blackmail taking ducting counterinsurgency to essentially pacify people who are against
advantage of people's needs'.62 While a Valleunido canvasser denies the mine—to buy their hearts and minds?’ He replied, ‘first there has
this,63 people felt that Southern was taking advantage of people's needs, never been an insurgency,’ here ‘was just a run-of-the-mill violence,’
which is reminiscent of Karl Polanyi’s (2001/1944: 118) observations of before continuing: ‘We are not pacifiers; our know-how is to be de-
‘hunger,’ as instrumental to forcing people into work, or Milford velopmentalists’.65 Aside from the repeated attempts by Southern to
call the opposition ‘terrorists’ or ‘anti-mining terrorists,’ engaging in
‘white terrorism,’66 which even extents to Carlos Aranda at a public
55
Aranda offers this shortened example: ‘We had a march against that [the event, ‘Jueves Minero,’ reminding people that the birthplace of Abimael
health center] agreement the following day in front of Cocachacra [city hall] Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, is Deán Valdivia, conjuring up the
and only 50 people showed up in the last 15 min and never again, never again’. stigma of terruco to imply that the Tambo Valley ‘villagers have terrorist
Interview 24. genes’ (La Republica, 2018: n.p). A statement he later retracted. The
56
Interview 24, 16-01-2018.
57
Interview 24, 16-01-2018.
58 64
Interview 37, 17-01-2018. Huff’s (2017: 157, 167) Sitzkrieg (‘sitting war’/’slow war of attrition’) is
59
Interview 13, 14-01-2018. another exploration of constructing environmental deprivation.
60 65
61 66
Interview 28, 16-01-2018. Interview, Huff’s (2017) “White Terrorism,’ according to Peruvian judge
62
Interview 3, 12-01-2018. Duberlí Rodríguez, means ‘generating anxiety and alarm in the population
63
Interview 21, 15-01-2018. using media and social networks’.
22
Tambo Valley has not only experienced sustained social warfare efforts, people, land defenders and people with attachments to the land, in-
or what the company calls ‘developmentalism’, but the Peruvian Na- creasingly equated with the communist insurgents of the past, comprise
tional Police (PNP) and DINOES repeatedly invading the region, which the political terrain to be managed and shaped to gain access to land
includes a sixty day military occupation under the State of Emergency. and subsoil resources. Southern persists in orchestrating their social
While protesters did engage in ‘run-of-the-mill violence’, this was pro- war of attrition to start operations. Meanwhile, farmers continue to
voked by an extractive intervention and met with a whole-of-govern- protest, earning them prison sentences and the physical and mental
ment counterinsurgency approach orchestrated through formal and scars from the beatings and killings of friends, loved ones or acquain-
informal private-public agreements. tances. There is a psychogeographical space being produced, not only
The line formulated between the ‘excessive’ violence dispensed by through coercion and repression, but also through biopolitical invest-
the PNP and Southern's efforts to ‘help’ overcome its environmental and ments into the Tambo Valley in which amenities, gifts and technologies
developmental issues is thinner than the official public version from the are used as a method to approve extraction. The forests were once
private sector would suggest. The line is blurred formally with private- destroyed to control the people and now the people must be controlled
public security partnerships, but informally with Southern's ‘public to acquire the subsoil resources. The state is the framework and struc-
relations’ with ‘mayors, the church, [and] social things’ that, many ture that facilitates the ongoing systematic conquest of natural re-
speculate, involves paying off national political leaders. This division sources, and while ‘politics is the continuation of war by other means,’
between the private and public sectors, under neoliberalism, begins to we can say business is a type of warfare by every means to captivate
dissolve when transnational companies negotiating contracts with the docile bodies and capture fertile lands to maximize shareholder value,
government, military and police officials to dispense repression against maintain legitimacy and, consequently, affirming the path of rapid
the popular desires of the Valley. The illegal vested interests of the past biodiversity loss, ecological and climate crises.
are becoming today's political norms under neoliberal political
economy, cementing a self-reinforcing cycle of natural resource ex- Conflicts of interest
traction and militarization. The root of this mining conflict lies with a
national, regional and, at times, local government that for reasons of None.
economic growth, social development and, likely, self-interest want the
mine and disregard popular agricultural and environmental concerns. Acknowledgments
The social war discourse resonates, when the Peruvian political system
serves as ‘instruments [of] our enemies,’ specifically politicians and This research was funded by a small grant from the Department of
mining companies, who are using this system ‘to pursue and subjugate’ Social and Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The
the Tambo Valley to the imperatives of industrial development and Netherlands. This departmental support and grant is deeply appreciated
economic growth. and created the conditions to peruse this research. This research,
This is not to say that problems do not exist in the Tambo Valley. however, would not have taken place nor would have been possible
‘Soft’ counterinsurgency subsists on social issues and vulnerabilities, without Carlo Eduardo Fernández Valencia whose tireless translation
often using sociologists, anthropologists and census teams—as integral work and positive attitude in tiring and strenuous situations allowed
to integrated monetary shaping operations—to not only map the human this research to go as far as it did. This article greatly benefited from the
terrain, but to find the cracks, fissures or existing communal conflicts to editorial commitment of Judith Verweijen, whose patience, editorial
divide and conquer populations. Common in Peru is pinning urban care and friendship I am privileged to have and pleased to share.
against rural populations (see Andreucci & Kallis, 2017), or farm Similarly, Amber Huff‘s editorial comments, conversations and emo-
owners against day labors. Another divisive governmentality strategy is tional support remains invaluable. Thank you to the three anonymous
to seize upon the failures of industrial agriculture (marginalizing small- reviewers for their detailed, challenging and supportive comments,
holder farming) to position mining as a solution. Information and civil which also includes recognizing the administrative work of Tor Arve
operations or community development are employed to slowly build a Benjaminsen and Philip Steinberg at Political Geography and all the re-
social armor to deflect the opponent's attack. Grievance, need, desire or search participants and the nameless individuals who helped make this
ambitions serve as points of intervention to begin a process of social article possible.
engineering or winning the ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’. This ‘need’ on the part
of the people, the erasure of sustainable practices and governments and Appendix A. Supplementary data
companies' ability to intervene with money are producing spaces of
(low-intensity) ‘militarizaton by consumption’ (Marijnen & Verweijen, Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
2016: 276). This militarization, however, is the militarization of ev- doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.02.001.
eryday life, described by Foucault and highlighted by social war dis-
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